Washington DC - The House of Representatives on Wednesday voted through a bill that would force TikTok to cut ties with its Chinese owner or get banned in the US.

The legislation is the biggest threat yet to the platform.

The lawmakers voted 352 in favor of the proposed law and 65 against, in a rare moment of bipartisan unity in politically divided Washington.

The fate of the bill is uncertain in the Senate, where key figures are against making such a drastic move against an intensely popular app that has 170 million US users.

President Joe Biden will sign the bill, known officially as the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, into law if it comes to his desk, the White House has said – although the 81-year-old only recently launched his own account.

The measure, which passed unanimously through committee last week, requires TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, to sell the app within 180 days or see it barred from the Apple and Google app stores in the US.

It would also give the president power to designate other applications to be a national security threat if under the control of a country considered adversarial to the US.

The resurgent campaign by Washington against TikTok came as a surprise to the company, the Wall Street Journal reported, with TikTok executives reassured when Biden joined the app last month as part of his campaign for a second term.

"This latest legislation being rushed through at unprecedented speed without even the benefit of a public hearing poses serious Constitutional concerns," wrote Michael Beckerman, TikTok's vice president for public policy, in a letter to the bill's co-sponsors seen by AFP.

The co-sponsors, House Republican Mike Gallagher and House Democrat Raja Krishnamoorthi, as well as the White House, argue that the bill is not a ban of TikTok as long as the company divests from ByteDance.

In a turnaround from his earlier stance, former President Donald Trump on Monday said he is against a ban, mainly because it would strengthen Meta, the owner of Instagram and Facebook, which he called an "enemy of the people."

Some Democrats, such as California Rep. Robert Garcia and Rep. Delia Ramirez of Illinois, oppose the bill, which they argue will only hurt content creators.

Other efforts to ban TikTok also failed, with a bill proposed a year ago getting nowhere largely over free speech concerns.

Similarly, a state law passed in Montana banning the platform was suspended by a federal court on the suspicion that it likely violated constitutional free speech rights.